


Knives and Alcohol

by SleeplessMarea



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 02:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8779540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleeplessMarea/pseuds/SleeplessMarea
Summary: A recounting of the first time Cassandra Railly saves James Cole's life.  Explores why she might have chosen to perform emergency surgery on a bleeding time traveler in a hotel room rather than just calling 911.





	

**Author's Note:**

> My first fanfic in the "12 Monkeys" world. My first fanfic which I actually published. A hurt/comfort tale.

Knives and Alcohol

She was waiting at the hotel bar again, downing more whiskey cocktails this one evening than she had since her college days. Wondering if her family and friends may have been right after all. How had they phrased it? Her cousin had been tactful:“Post traumatic stress happens to the best of us, and you’ve been through more than most.” Her best friend from med school was less so. “Geez, If we had just met, and you were saying stuff like that, I’d think you were a nut job”. 

Even the bartender had an opinion, though hers was delivered with kind eyes and a soft smile. “Honey, it’s been a week. I don’t care how cute he is. This is just gonna make you crazy”. That had finally convinced her, and she had gotten up to pay her tab and check out. Then, as if on cue, there was a commotion near the entrance. And she saw him.

He was staggering up the grand staircase, pushing past an employee trying to block his entrance to the lobby. She recognized him immediately, even with his face partially obscured by the hood of his jacket. The same jacket he was wearing before he disappeared. 

She called his name out then, rushing to his side. “It’s okay… it’s okay. He’s with me”. He was swaying off balance as he stood, and she instinctively threw her arm under his shoulders to support him. He leaned heavily against her and winced, and it was then when she noticed the blood staining his clothes. More blood than she remembered.

“You need to get to a hospital” she said almost angrily. He had been shot somewhere above his left hip (she hadn’t had time to look more closely) two years ago this week, give or take a day. And now she was watching that same wound bleed around his clutching fingers. It made no sense. But she pushed the thought away and concentrated on keeping the man hanging onto her upright and mobile. 

“No… no hospitals, no authorities.” Cole uttered through clenched teeth. He was clearly in pain but was continuing a determined if clumsy progress across the carpet as Cassie steered him toward the lobby elevators. “Just you.”

Thankfully the doors slid open to an empty elevator only seconds after she hit the “up” button. They slipped inside and as the doors closed, Cole muffled a groan as he bumped against the brass side rail. Slumped over, she judged him to be just a few inches taller and not much heavier than she, but he was tiring and was leaning more heavily on her each passing second.

The ride up to her floor seemed to take ten times longer than usual. When the doors finally opened she grabbed her companion and propelled him gingerly out into the hall. “Just a bit further” she kept repeating in what she hoped was her most reassuring “bedside” voice. If he passed out on the floor she doubted she could get him up by herself and the last thing she wanted to do now was involve hotel personnel. “Easy now…just around this corner”.

Somehow she managed to get her keycard out while keeping Cole from falling down. After a few fumbling tries to scan it through the door lock and several muttered oaths, she was rewarded with a “click” and she half pushed, half kicked the door open, pulling Cole in after her.

Cassie managed to maneuver him to one of the two double beds before Cole’s strength finally gave way and he collapsed across it. Frankly she was impressed he had made it this far. She could only guess what had happened to him after he’d been shot. Right now it seemed like he’d just been walking around bleeding, without receiving even the most basic treatment. 

When The Incident (as she had taken to calling it) had happened, she expected it would be burned in her memory forever, but it had been long enough now she couldn’t recall every detail anymore. But some things were hard to forget; like Cole getting shot in a confrontation with police and the anguished expression on his face as he half defiantly pleaded with her to meet him, here, in two years. 

Remembering was making her lightheaded, so she shook it off and refocused. Cole was gazing at her with a steady intensity she read as a mix of relief, trust and desperation. He was also trying not to show how much pain he was in, and failing. She leaned forward and carefully and quickly peeled back the blood soaked-edge of his shirt, prying his reddened fingers off as she did so. What she saw made her wince. Until she could clean it up, there was no telling how far the bullet had penetrated, or what damage it might have done.

Cassie glanced again at her patient. Now that he was with her and safe, the fight seemed to have gone out of him. She noted that he was breathing in short shallow gasps. Once she got the bleeding stopped treatment for shock would have to be next. She gave Cole what she hoped was an encouraging smile and instructed “Deep breaths”. Then she ran to the mini bar and selected from the array of tiny liquor bottles. This would do as an antiseptic for now. 

“You came” Cole said. She noticed he was trying to breathe deeply as he had been told. His skin was pale but also slightly flushed. And he was still looking intently at her.

She smiled ruefully as she soaked the cloth in the liquor. “I had to see if you were real”.

“Here I am” Cole replied.

“Here you are” she acknowledged. “You know you’re late,” she commented, hoping to distract him as she carefully lifted his shirt again.

“It’s not an exact science” Cole answered as Cassie pressed the alcohol soaked cloth against the wound. Although she was as gentle as possible, Cole groaned just as soon as she touched the affected area. Then his eyes lost focus, pupils dialating, his cry of pain turning into shallow, rasping gasps. Anxiously, Cassie called out his name, but Cole didn’t seem to hear. “Cole” Cassie repeated, more loudly and insistently. But he only moaned softly and, eyes rolling back, slipped into unconsciousness. 

Cassie was alarmed - there was always a chance that Cole could be going into a seizure. She quickly checked his vitals. His pulse was weak and a little rapid, his breathing shallow and somewhat ragged. She swore softly; it would certainly be handy to have her doctor’s bag with her right now, but it was buried in the back seat of the rental in the parking garage. It might as well have been on the moon.

She was relieved when even after a few minutes of her continuing to treat Cole that he remained quietly unconscious, showing no signs imminent seizure. His passing out was actually a blessing considering what was coming next. She HAD to examine his wound to assess the extent of the damage. Cole had wisely tried to keep pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding, but it had not stopped. There was always a chance the bullet had hit a major blood vessel. Then she might find herself not only needing to remove a bullet, but also taking precautions against him bleeding out. In a clinic or hospital would be tricky enough; in a hotel room without proper equipment it was an insane risk.

Cassie grabbed her purse from the floor and upended it on the bed, rummaging through the contents. She fingered several items, exasperated. How was she going to manage this? Cole murmured something and she reached over to touch his forehead. He felt unusually warm, possibly feverish, but without a thermometer she couldn’t be sure. 

She sighed, grabbed a fresh hand towel, doused it with more alcohol and resumed washing blood away from Cole’s wound. There was quite a lot, and she tried to keep her touch as light as possible to spare him additional pain. When she was done, she carefully poured a small amount of alcohol directly into the wound. She felt Cole flinch briefly, but he remained unconscious. 

And now to deal with the bleeding. She folded several more washcloths to improvise a pad, which she then placed on the wound and applied pressure. Cassie noted how a significant amount of blood had soaked into his shirt and his hand was reddened with it. She ignored the clothes for the moment and concentrated on cleaning him up as best she could. Carefully she unclenched Cole’s hand, sponging it off with another improvised alcohol wipe, the cloth turning pink and dripping slightly on the sheets despite her best efforts. 

She took the opportunity to check his pulse again, her fingers resting lightly on his wrist. Looking at her watch, she counted beats, which were steady and already seemed stronger. His hand felt warm to her touch too. As she held it, she noticed not only the light trace of several old scars and the slightly rough skin that came with a life of physical labor, but also that he had long, nicely shaped fingers.

Cassie ran to the bathroom two get two more towels, soaking them in water this time. The cool one she placed on Cole’s forehead and she used warm one to swab the dirt and grime off of his face. It was the first chance she’d had to get a good look at her kidnapper. Her patient. Her “time traveler”. “God, there goes my scientific objectivity,” she thought. 

Cole’s unconscious face looked surprisingly young and vulnerable, though faint worry lines across his forehead and around his eyes suggested he must be roughly the same age as she. Cassie also noted a straight, almost aquiline nose and regular, nearly delicate features his beard and mustache couldn’t completely disguise. 

Back in the lobby she had recognized him immediately; here it was as if she was seeing at him for the first time. When they’d met in 2013, Cole had seemed just another scruffy vagrant like dozens she’d seen at the hospital. Now, he was a quick hair trim and a shave away from being handsome. Cassie suppressed a nervous laugh, imagining how her cousin or her friend would react if they walked in to see her performing emergency treatment on her PTSD “hallucination” passed out on a hotel bed. 

Cassie thought longingly again about her doctor’s bag. Retrieving it however would take about a half hour, and a feeling she couldn’t explain was making her reluctant to leave Cole alone for that long. 

She should just call 911 and get Cole to a hospital, against his will or not. He was currently unable to object, but there was no telling how long that would last, so it was now or never. She'd go along with the paramedics, posing as his doctor or a member of his family. She’d find a way to make it work, somehow. Cole was seriously enough injured no emergency room would turn him away. Once they had patched him up and given him proper medical care even he would have to see it had been the right choice, and the responsible, sane thing to do. She sat down on the bed and picked up her cell phone.

Cassie stared at the screen, recalling how she had been on this same phone, talking to her then boyfriend Aaron when she first spied Cole, lurking in the back seat of her car. He had come to kidnap her, and for eight minutes she had been his hostage. It had felt like eight hours. 

At first all she could see was a shadowy figure threatening her with a knife, and she had been terrified. But then, something had changed. She had thought about it a lot in the days since before she realized what that was. It was his voice. Once he realized how frightened she was, Cole had softly called her by her full name and told her he was not going to hurt her. She had heard regret…and sadness… in that voice, along with panic and desperation.

Then minutes later, after he’d dragged her into that abandoned room and started tying her to a chair with a salvaged cord, she’d been able to keep calm and engage him in conversation. She’d asked him his name. He’d answered her, reluctantly. But that had broken the ice, and he had gone on to tell a wild tale straight out of science fiction. But she could see he believed it completely, which meant he was either utterly mad or something that frightened her even more – simply telling the truth. 

Cassie also remembered how Cole, struggling with knots that kept slipping, jerked on the cord wrapped around her wrists, but noticing her wince in pain, immediately untied her and started over. What was it he had said? That he was running out of time? His words had sounded cryptic and nonsensical to her. But then he’d taken out his knife and used it to slowly and deliberately scratch her watch, and broken Time. Nothing had been the same for her since.

Cassie closed her eyes and was surprised to find tears leaking onto her cheeks. She was no closer to making sense out of anything Cole had told her two years ago – about Leland Frost or the plague or what that potential future nightmare meant for her or the world. Or making sense of Cole himself.

But she believed him. She couldn’t help it. It might mean that she was as deluded as he was, but it didn’t matter. He had come to her for help. He had trusted her. The least she could do was the same.

Cassie put down her cell phone and again looked through the contents of her purse. She found the items she wanted and set them aside: a tiny flashlight, a purse-sized emergency sewing kit and the pocket knife Aaron jokingly put into her stocking one Christmas. “You never know when it might come in handy”, he’d said.

Cassie sighed. No, she knew she couldn’t betray Cole. But she did still need to save him. She reached for the knife, slipped open the blade and poured a generous amount of alcohol on to clean it. 

It was time she got started.


End file.
